After the funeral, we visited the farm for
the last time. I was overwhelmed by a sense of loss. Jiichan
and the farm had been a touchstone for all that was Japanese in
me. Some part of me had expected them to stay frozen in time,
an ageless haven for my heart.

I had spent quite a bit of time on the
farm when I was growing up. Bored and at loose ends, I had
spent hours leafing through old photo albums and pawing through
drawers full of rhinestone shoe-buckles, strangely shaped
Japanese scissors, and old celluloid fountain pens. One day I
found a book the size and shape of a high school yearbook
entitled Mohaveland. On the cover, a man and a tree stood
silhouetted against a dramatic desert sky. On the first spread
were photos of rows of shoddy barracks in the searing Arizona
desert, with guard towers and barbed wire in the distance. The
book was a souvenir of Poston Relocation Center, where my
family had been incarcerated, along with 120,000 other Japanese
Americans, during World War II. My family had been swept from
their sprawling pre-war farm on the California coast, leaving
everything behind except what they could carry.

Of course I knew about Camp. The
family’s reference point for time was “before
Camp”, “during Camp”, and “after
Camp”. It must have been a wrenching experience, but they
spoke of it matter-of-factly, without bitterness. Shikata ga nai, they
said. It couldn’t be helped.

Thumbing through Mohaveland, I found
snapshots of residents from each of the barracks... Block 116,
Block 117, Block 118... There were photos of the choir, the
Young Buddhist Association, odori (Japanese dance)
performances... and most striking of all– Japanese
gardens with stone bridges and lanterns and carefully pruned
pine trees. I remember wondering, What sort of people would
respond to being uprooted and stuck in a prison camp by
building gardens in the desert and memorializing their
internment in a yearbook?

My grandparents lived through the rigors
of immigration, discrimination, the Depression, relocation
camps, the economic death of family farms, aging and loss.
“Shikata ga nai,” they said. The usual translation
is “it can’t be helped, there’s no
alternative”, but shikata ga nai connotes something
vastly more positive than simple resignation – with
echoes of “when you’re stuck with a lemon, make
lemonade, “living well is the best revenge”, or
“life is transitory; make every moment count.”

Roaming the farm for the last time, I
marveled at the richness and creativity of Jiichan’s
life. After the War, my grandparents worked as migrant laborers
until they scraped up enough to buy ten acres, less than a
tenth the size of their prewar acreage. Jiichan built the house
and outbuildings himself, with the help of his sons. There were
a dozen different kinds of cacti growing near the garbage can.
They had arrived as 39-cent plants in tiny plastic pots; now
they grew on top of each other, squeezing and spilling over
themselves, spiny ones, hairy ones, tall skinny ones, flat
paddle-leaves and fat fluted domes. A pile of abalone and clam
shells lay near the water tap, souvenirs of coastal forages to
gather seaweed and eat black sea snails. The front yard was
edged with beautiful rocks, gathered on road trips with his
friends. In the shed were more rocks, shelves and shelves of
them – examples of the art of suiseki – carefully
selected for their resemblance to the mountains of Japan, and
each set off by a wooden stand precisely carved to fit.

Beneath the apparent dullness and routine
of rural life, a self-sufficient and joyful creativity had
flowered The walls of the house were lined with calligraphies,
painting and plaques crafted by friends in Camp.
Baachan’s (Grandma’s) homemade Japanese silk quilts
lay on the beds. The drawers of the old, treadle-powered Singer
sewing machine were crammed with tatting reels, crochet hooks,
bits of lace and fancy-glass buttons cut off of worn clothes to
decorate anew. In the home-built curio cabinet were handicrafts
created from the most mundane materials – life-like
crepe paper flowers and intricately patterned umbrellas and
Japanese lanterns painstakingly crafted from dozens of old
cigarette packs, folded and glued together.

In the storage room I found three
suitcases. They looked like the old pre-Samsonite cardboard
ones, complete with leather edges and metal fittings, except
that the bodies were made out of wood. “I made them in
Camp,” Jiichan had told me. “When the War broke
out, the FBI came and got all the men in the middle of the
night. I didn’t even have time to pack a suitcase.”
(Jiichan had spent most of the War in a high-security camp for
“dangerous aliens”, separated from the rest of the
family.) He laughed, “After awhile, they made me a Camp
policeman. I was a policeman, but in the middle of the night, I
turned into a dorobo (thief). I stole some scrap wood and made
myself these suitcases.”

The suitcases are now stacked in my front
hall, handy storage in an over-stuffed apartment, the top
surface a catch-all for magazines and mail. Jiichan is gone,
shikata ga nai, but sometimes I catch sight of those suitcases,
and I’m grateful that I am one of the things Jiichan
made.